Accounting - the cool career

Ernst & Young auditor Ash Matuschka. Photo / Surf Lifesaving NZ

More secondary school and university students should consider accounting and finance as a career, says recruitment specialists Robert Half International.

"It's a career that offers them excitement, variety - and a world of opportunity", said Megan Alexander, the firm's New Zealand general manager of finance and accounting.

As teenagers start returning to school and university study, Robert Half is urging them to put aside any ideas of accountants as people who just sit in front of computers manipulating spreadsheets.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," said Ms Alexander. "Rather than simply being bean counters, today's accountants work in a variety of exciting and dynamic roles that are frequently at the very heart of their business.

"They work with every organisation, from large multinational, to small accounting practice, from government department to charity, sports club and school," Ms Alexander said. "Finance and accounting is a crucial part of every organisation, no matter what its core focus, which offers possibly the widest choice of working environments."

Ms Alexander, who is herself a chartered accountant, says finance and accounting professionals obviously do need technical skill, but employers are increasingly looking for employees who are also "people people".

"Accounting and finance professionals often have to work with everyone in the organisation, from the CEO to the receptionist. They need to be able to explain financial issues in everyday language, to explain the impact of certain decisions on the business, to work in multi-disciplinary teams on crucial projects.

"Few other professions can match the variety of work available, or the number of career options. It is, quite honestly, a cool career."

One young accountant who agrees that he has chosen an exciting and interesting career is Ash Matuschka, 23, a senior auditor with Ernst & Young.

Ash, whose hobbies outside work include racing inflatable rescue boats and surf-lifesaving ("that's my other, unpaid, job", he says), never considered accounting as a career when he was a child or a young teen. But at university he chose to do a business degree "because I thought I wanted to go into business".

He decided to major in marketing and accounting and, by his second year, had become increasingly interested in becoming a chartered accountant. He went straight from Auckland University to Ernst & Young, where he has been for three years, and has just completed his final professional exam to become a chartered accountant.

Now, he says, he has a fascinating job that takes him into a wide variety of organisations - all the way from listed companies to small charities - and involves working with "all the different people in all the different roles" as he gets to understand each business.

Although most people understand his job involves checking financial statements and providing opinions on whether they are correct or not, he says to do that auditors really need to understand every aspect of the business. And that involves talking to people all the time.

"If you were not a people person in this job, you just wouldn't be able to do it", he said.